Friday, August 4, 2006, and the twenty-fourth day of the Israeli war with Hezbollah comes to an end - ten thousand troops now in southern Lebanon, small battles beyond, up to the Syrian border, Beirut being bombed, along with the Christian enclaves on the north side of the city now, Hezbollah rockets now hitting fifty miles into Israel with the expected civilian deaths, and Israel taking out bridges so all main roads in and out of Lebanon are impassible - thus no aid will be coming in. The United States still blocking the worldwide call for an immediate ceasefire, and Janes Defense Weekly reporting Iran will send surface-to-air missiles to Hezbollah so they can take out the Israeli jets. In the new Iraq we created one hundred thousand take to the streets of Baghdad in support of Hezbollah shouting Death to Israel and Death to the United States, and we lose two more of our troops in the western provinces, and the bombings go - twenty or more Iraqi police dead when a suicide bomber does his thing at a soccer game where these guys were playing the locals for the fun of it, and the usual death squad assassinations and kidnappings from Mosul to Basra, and the running gun battles with the militias. And the roadside and suicide bombings ramp up in Afghanistan of course. British Prime Minister Blair postpones his August vacation to work with the UN on some sort of cease-fire in Lebanon, followed by a peacekeeping force of yet-to-be-named troops to go in and either calm things, or just "take out" Hezbollah (there's some disagreement), while President Bush starts his Texas vacation, but only ten days this year, not the usual full month of clearing brush and riding his mountain bike. Those who advise him, or control him depending on your point of view, the neoconservatives working out of the vice president's office, are working up plans for war with Syria and Iran now too - so there will be four active fronts in the war on terror, or the war to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East through regime change.

To some it seems like the end of the world, to others like a wonderful opportunity, and then to others it looks like the Rapture is finally at hand, and the return of Jesus - the end of the world, but a good thing.

Setting aside the Rapture crowd, there are two ways to look at this - things are spinning out of control, or if you're a neoconservative theorist, going just they way they should. But the latter is, for now, a minority view. The administration is working overtime to make it the majority view.

The administration's effort to reframe the crises in the world as great opportunity is not going so well. The incredibly stupid chin-up cliché is that when the world hands you lemons, you make lemonade. Most everyone is wondering how we got into this mess and how we're going to make lemonade out of these particular lemons (or make Leban-ade as some have cynically said).

Emma Brockes here says what happening is like that scene in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum, finding himself chased by a T-Rex, struggles momentarily to organize a response. "I'm fairly alarmed here," he says. And she says she herself is fairly alarmed here. It's only funny in the movie.

That item in the Guardian (UK), about how everyone was saying that the election of George Bush in 2004 that gave him another four years to do his insane things will be the end of everything, itself ends with this -

There is an argument to be made that the world is no more in crisis now than it has been at any other point in history, give or take a world war, and that the only reason we are freaking out is that the countries involved are western. No one reported much existential angst during Rwanda. When Israel bombed Beirut airport I was aware that part of the reason I got end-of-the-world shivers was that, unlike the airports in Baghdad or Mogadishu, I have been to Beirut's and it is just like Luton. When two countries with well-decorated departure halls and branches of Starbucks start fighting, you pay more attention than when Ethiopia marches into Somalia, as it did in July without anyone paying much attention. (The Ethiopian troops entered at the invitation of Somalia's secular interim government, to help fight the Islamic militia, who promptly threatened them with another jihad).

These are strange times and the fact that everyone claimed to see them coming in 2004 hasn't made them any easier to deal with. It occasionally feels as if magnetic flip is taking place, the process of polar reversal that happens every 300 millennia or so when north becomes south and south north, and birds fly into buildings and people with pacemakers keel over in the street. What can you do? For the past 10 years I have taken William L Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on holiday and for the first time, last week, I actually thought about reading it. (I didn't, obviously.) As multiple wars on multiple fronts drag on, you try to initiate a cycle of response that reminds you there are things to be grateful for; the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo going off without violence, for example, and Mel Gibson self-detonating. You reassure yourself that, as in all cycles of history, this one will come to an end, too. Then you remember that the man in charge of writing the ending is George Bush, and you have to start again.

She is not hopeful.

But then, here, stateside, there seems to be something in the air. Conventional wisdom, whatever that is, seems to be shifting.

As mentioned in the pages in April, David Broder of the Washington Post is sometimes called the dean of Washington journalists (probably because he has a gift for the obvious and has no firm opinion until everyone else has agreed on one), and looking at what the retired generals were saying about the secretary of defense, he said Rumsfeld needed to resign - "Even in Vietnam we saw no such open defiance." That's here if you want the details - four months before Hillary Clinton decided the same thing. He goes with the flow, and she doesn't, until she just has to, and there's an advantage to it.

This week Broder decided it was time for another stroll through the obvious - here he says that "the logic of prolonging the agony" just doesn't add up and its time to withdraw our troops from Iraq. When you've lost Broder you've lost the mainstream, or more accurately, he's the canary in the coal mine. When the canary is dead in the bottom of the cage, it's time to get the hell out of the mine. You could die. The grand experiment to remake the Middle East was, it seems now, just dumb.

The other canary, so to speak, is Thomas Freidman of the New York Times - the moustache of patience, famous for arguing from the pages of "the newspaper of record" that the grand experiment to remake the Middle East was quite smart, and the right thing to do. Sure there were problems, and he explained them in detail drawing on his vast experience in that part of the world, but then said the next six months would be critical. It all might work out. Perhaps he got tired of six-month increment after six-month increment, because Friday, August 4, he gave up, with this, saying that it's "now obvious that we are not mid-wifing democracy in Iraq" but just "babysitting a civil war." He ran out of patience.

Is this important? Do these two guys really matter?

Steve Benen thinks so -

In the world of professional punditry, heavy-hitters like David Broder and Tom Friedman not only help reflect the conventional wisdom, they help shape it. The mainstream political world considers their opinions as the most serious and credible perspectives in the country, and in turn, their points of view become synonymous with sensibility.

And right now, both want out of Iraq. … Welcome to the new sensible, centrist position on Iraq. The political mainstream has finally caught up with the Democratic mainstream. It's about time.

Well, that's from the left, noting the mainstream has shifted, ah… to the middle? Which is slightly to the left? Something like that. The right had been saying that the position of the Bush administration was really what most people knew was the middle position - if you agreed with the president you were smack dab in the middle where you should be, with everyone else, with every sensible and patriotic American. The Democrats are "out of the mainstream" and just loony lefties, and cut-and-run cowards to boot. That doesn't seem to be working anymore. The middle moved on them when they we're looking.

For Freidman it was the August 3 senate hearings that did it -

When our top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, tells a Senate Committee, as he did yesterday, that ''the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it,'' it means that three years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working. That means ''staying the course'' is pointless, and it's time to start thinking about Plan B - how we might disengage with the least damage possible.

... The administration now has to admit what anyone - including myself - who believed in the importance of getting Iraq right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can't throw more good lives after good lives.

... Yes, the best way to contain Iran would have been to produce a real Shiite-led democracy in Iraq, exposing the phony one in Tehran. But second best is leaving Iraq. Because the worst option - the one Iran loves - is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes.

Of course he cannot resist one more the-next-six-months-are-critical hail-Mary speculation - we could have a gigantic "last-ditch" peace conference - and that would be the United State, Russia, Europe, Japan, India, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria and Jordan, all sitting down together to work things out. But he knows that's just not going to happen -

For such a conference to come about, though, US would probably need to declare its intention to leave. Iraqis, other Arabs, Europeans and Chinese will get serious about helping to salvage Iraq only if they believe we are leaving and it will damage their interests.

But the likelihood the Bush-Cheney administration would "declare its intention to leave" is nil, or actually less than zero. He doesn't like it, but he wants out. This is a major change.

Is it a big deal?

Over at the Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum is actually hopeful -

Maybe I'm just a wild optimist about these things, but I think Broder and Friedman are bellwethers. They're both cautious, centrist, establishment liberals who have long hoped for success in Iraq, and they've both given up. Put them together with guys like George Will and Chuck Hagel on the right, and there's just not much support left for staying in Iraq outside of the neocon crazies and the rabid partisans. The wind is definitely shifting.

And as long as I'm being a wild optimist: if we finally develop a consensus that invading random Arab countries doesn't work so well at putting an end to support for radical jihadism, maybe we can start seriously thinking about what would work. Considering how phenomenally difficult the problem is, the sooner we put Iraq behind us and get our brightest minds thinking seriously about nonmilitary solutions, the better off we'll be.

There are nonmilitary solutions? Invading random Arab countries doesn't work so well at putting an end to support for radical jihadism?

Now that would require some really new thinking in Washington. We may be too far down the road for that. We have our way of dealing with things, and it's hard to admit that it doesn't work. Maybe it's not possible to admit. And after all, isn't Israel proving you can use massive force to eliminate terrorists, or at least make them seem powerless and humiliate them, so everyone rallies to your side and shuns them, or even laughs at them? No, wait. Bad example.

And anyway, nothing will change, as the war with Iran is on the way, and the Democrats will buy into that big time, as Bill Montgomery explains here -

I think we've run out of time. Events - from 9/11 on - have moved too fast and pushed us too far towards the clash of civilizations that most sane people dread but the neocons desperately want. The Dems are now just the cadet branch of the War Party. While the party nomenklatura is finally, after three bloody years, making dovish noises about the Iraq fiasco, I think their loyalty to Israel will almost certainly snap them back into line during the coming "debate" over war with Iran.

Or in detail -

It seems increasingly probable that that war will come soon - perhaps as early as November or December, although more likely next year. Israel's failure to knock out Hezbollah with a rapid first strike has left the neocons even deeper in the hole, enormously ratcheting up the pressure to try to recoup all losses by taking the war to Damascus and Tehran.

… What's become clear to me is that the Democratic Party (even it's allegedly anti-war wing) will not try to stop this insanity, and in fact will probably be led as meekly to the slaughter as it was during the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Watching the Dems line up to salute the Israeli war machine, hearing the uncomfortable and awkward silence descend on most of Left Blogistan once the bombs started falling in Lebanon, seeing how easily the same Orwellian propaganda tricks worked their magic on the pseudoliberals - all this doesn't leave too much room for doubt. As long as World War III can be sold as protecting the security and survival of the Jewish state, I suspect the overwhelming majority of Democrats, or at least the overwhelming majority of Democratic politicians, will support it.

And it is being sold, ferociously.

… I think the moment when I realized the Dems once again were going to be - would always be - dutiful spear carriers for the neocons was after Howard Dean and company treated the Iraqi prime minister's recent visit to Washington as an opportunity to do a little pro-Israel pandering of their own. To my eternal shame, I initially defended this ploy as a necessary bit of Machiavellian cynicism - a way for the Dems to protect their right flank from a president who not only thinks Israel is the 51st state but a red state to boot.

Cynical it certainly was. And in another situation I might have been justified in making allowances. It's a stinking, corrupt system, and to expect purity is to expect defeat. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that a party leadership that really cared about bringing the troops home probably wouldn't be so cavalier about trashing a guy who is actually a pretty crucial part of making that possible.

… The lesson learned from the Democratic reaction to Israel's war of choice is that the Dems are only likely to oppose war as long as the war in question can be framed as a fight against Iraqi insurgents and/or Shi'a death squads, rather than a fight for Israel. But the Iraq occupation isn't going to fit neatly into that frame much longer. In fact it's already slipped out of it. The Dems - always a little slow on the uptake - just haven't realized it yet.

… People tell me I shouldn't get hung up on this because, you know, if the Dems get in they'll make sure the seniors get their Social Security checks a little faster - or they'll keep the Supreme Court out of the hands of legal madmen or do something about global climate change or save the whales or whatever else it is that's supposed to make the Democratic Party infinitely preferable to the Republicans.

It's not that I discount these differences entirely - although they're easily oversold. But compared to the fate that awaits the republic, and the world, if the United States deliberately starts a war with Iran, those other considerations start to look pretty insignificant. I mean, we're talking about World War III here, fought by people who want to use tactical nuclear weapons. I'm supposed to put that out of my mind because the Dems might be a little bit more generous about funding the VA budget? I'm sorry, but that's fucking nuts.

The truth is that on the most important issue of our time - the cliff that drops into total darkness - the only real opposition left in this country is in the Pentagon, where, according to Sy Hersh, at least some of the generals are trying to stall the march to war. Plus whatever scattered resistance is left in the intelligence agencies following the purges of the past couple of years.

… I hope like hell I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I am. So I guess I'll just have to accept being labeled a traitor to the cause - or whatever the hardcore partisans are calling it. Sure, why not. They're certainly free to follow their party over the cliff (we're all going over it anyway) but I'd at least prefer to do it with my eyes open.

"I'm fairly alarmed here," he says. The conventional wisdom shifted. It doesn't matter.